Death sentence appeal filed for teen’s murderer

SHOCKING CRIME:：Forty days after being released from prison in 2011, Lin Kuo-cheng raped and murdered a 13-year-old student in Yunlin County

By Rich Chang / Staff reporter

Thu, Aug 22, 2013 - Page 3

The prosecutor-general on Tuesday filed an extra appeal with the Supreme Court asking it to review a ruling in which a repeat sex offender and murderer was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) filed the appeal, which seeks a death sentence for 36-year-old Lin Kuo-cheng (林國政), who was released on parole in February 2011 after serving more than eight years in prison for sexual and other offenses committed in 2002.

Lin then raped and murdered a 13-year-old female junior-high student in Yunlin County 40 days after his release from prison.

He had served more than 12 years in prison for sexually attacking two women before the junior-high student became his next victim.

The Yunlin District Court and the Taichung branch of the Taiwan High Court both sentenced Lin to death, but the Supreme Court on June 27 handed down a final ruling of a life sentence for Lin.

The latest verdict sparked statements of outrage from the general public, while the victim’s family said they could not accept that Lin had not been sentenced to death.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) applied for an extra-appeal request to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office after the ruling.

The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said after spending 12 years in prison, Lin committed a rape and murder shortly after being released from prison.

Obviously, the correction system failed and prosecutors believe correction is ineffective in Lin’s case, the office said.

While the Supreme Court believes Lin can still be rehabilitated after he showed a letter of remorse to the court and had asked the court to give him a chance to express remorse in front of the victim’s tomb, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office believes Lin’s actions were simply a case of expediency, the office said.